Posts Tagged ‘luke halliwell’

I had a thought today after reviewing on iTunes Connect the amount of downloads our apps have produced. I thought to myself – not bad, but I wonder how that stacks up with other developers.

I didn’t run across with any certainty what the average iPhone app produces, however Nicholas Lovell over at GAMESbrief noted the average around 25,000 downloads per app. While helpful this information doesn’t really tell the whole story. Some apps hardly have any downloads and others have tons. Nicholas commented that a median would be more helpful in figuring this out.

One of his astute readers, Luke Halliwell, commented that by plugging the data into a formula (Zipf’s law) that he derived the median was probably closer to 4000 downloads per app.

What would be real interesting is removing the free apps from the equation. Then trying to figure out where these paid apps are setting their price.

Just for giggles, suppose that by removing the free apps you get about 2000 downloads per paid app and lets suppose they sale for a price of $1.99. That means your average iPhone app profits about $2800.

Of course what would be really helpful, instead of the speculation is if Apple just gave us the information!